An important loss in an industrial gas turbine is caused by the intake system. Even though these losses have a direct effect on the performance of the engine, the design of the intake system is dominated by local space restriction. Consequently, intake losses are site specific parameters. They correlate with the airflow velocity and therefore operating conditions of the engine affect the intake performance. But due to the high experimental effort necessary to investigate intake losses, only sparse information about this effect is available. For the present study a typical vertical industrial intake duct was investigated numerically for different operating scenarios. The performance simulation of a single shaft heavy duty gas turbine provided boundary conditions for the CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) study of the intake duct. For all operating conditions a large scale vortex developed in the intake plenum and entered the compressor. Bearing support struts caused local flow distortion at the compressor inlet. Even for extreme operating scenarios the relative changes of pressure recovery compared to the design point value were small (0.1%). However, the resulting power change was generally in excess of the intake loss deviation. Applied to a heavy duty gas turbine, the maximum deviation of 0.2% of power was equivalent to about 0.4 MW. In most cases lower pressure losses were predicted which benefited the overall engine performance. For the cold scenario the intake performance deteriorated and resulted in a relative reduction of power of nearly 0.5 MW.

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